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‘THE HUMAN REMAINS TO BE DISCOVERED’ AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLY APOLLON

Psychoanalyst and philosopher (PhD, Paris-Sorbonne), Willy Apollon is the founder and past president of GIFRIC. He is supervising analyst and consultant analyst at the ‘388,’ the Center for the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Young Adult Psychotics created by GIFRIC in 1982, as well as at GIFRIC’s Psychoanalytic Clinic for the Family. He animates several training seminars for the training of analysts as well as a seminar in mondialisation in Montreal and Quebec City and has published widely on a variety of topics pertaining to psychoanalysis, aesthetics, social, cultural and political practices, and more. His newest work L’adresse improbable is forthcoming as is an edited volume that explores the fundamental concepts of his metapsychology.

Adolf Wölfli’s Creation as an Attempt to Establish Time and Space

Based on a chronological reading of Adolf Wölfli, it is demonstrated that his work was a response to a psychological necessity to install the dimension of time. Following a brief sketch of his life, the effect of Wölfli’s encounter with the psychiatrist Morgenthaler is considered. More specifically, the effect this encounter had on stylistic aspects of his work are highlighted. Special attention is given to the “autobiographical” aspect and, in this context, it is argued that the imaginary journey which Wölfli describes can be interpreted as either an attempt to construe himself a past, or, via the paradox of sublation, as an attempt to install the dimensions of time and space. This is related to Wölfli’s capture by the desire of his mother for whom he took the place of a brother who had died earlier. In the face of these two failed attempts, it seemed that signing his work with “St Adolf II” could temporarily guarantee him his place in the family tree and furthermore could guarantee the difference between himself and his brother “St Adolf I”.